“Watch out GTA…here comes DRIV3R!”
“DRIV3R could quite possibly be the most anticipated hit of the year!”
Yeah, we’ve heard or read all the hype. DRIV3R, produced by Atari (hint, hint), was dubbed as a “GTA killer” long before any ads were put out. Despite having some big shoes to fill, the game was expected to give the upcoming Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas a run for its money.
The effort is definitely there. According to the game’s documentary, it took the producers somewhere around three years to put this title together, meaning they injected four cities, one hundred and sixty miles of drivable road, and a mess of cars and lawn furniture to ram through just to take hold of a “true driving experience”. But, has all the hard work paid off?
So, here we go…DRIV3R for the Playstation 2. And you better buckle up for this one, because Jay’s the wheelman on this ride.
Gameplay
For a game that’s supposed to be in competition with the newGTA game coming soon, you would believe that DRIV3R would bring something brand new and impressive, right? Yeah, you’d think that, but this is not the case here, for this game is mot much more than a knock-off as far as gameplay goes. It adds a few touches, but not enough to put it in the big leagues.
Out of the modes of play you can select, “Undercover” is your one-player story mode. You play as Tanner, an undercover cop with a short fuse. He goes incognito as a getaway driver to stop a shipment of stolen exotic cars and find the person or persons behind the crime. When you’re not playing the one-player adventure, there are many other modes to choose from, such as Quick Chase, Quick Getaway, and a few different racing style games.
The majority of the game puts you behind the wheel of many types of vehicles such as various cars and truck, motorcycles, and motorboats. Each vehicle drives differently, and of course, the vehicles you choose from vary in performance and reliability. Driving is pretty basic, as it plays similar to many racing games. Your braking and acceleration is all pressure-sensitive, and with most cars, steering and braking gets so squirrelly, is seems impossible to control it. This becomes a serious issue when you get into the chase-style missions, because whomever you chase will definitely get the jump on you, so you must drive with near-flawless performance to even have a shot.
In DRIV3R, both Tanner and the vehicle he is operating have “health” bars. Every time he rams into another object, both Tanner and the car lose a chunk of life. It’s a beautiful concept, except when you find yourself on your last legs, and you accidentally tap into another vehicle or graze a wall and die. It’s a shame that the few good touches in the game have a major way of backfiring, but it’s a pretty nice concept nonetheless.
On foot, maneuverability isn’t any better. Tanner walks and runs at one rigidly animated speed, and has an almost useless ballerina-style jump. His movements are controlled with the analog sticks like most other games, but his motions tend to be more awkward and cumbersome. For example, he can’t perform a running jump without a pause between the run and the jump, and on top of that, he doesn’t gain any extra distance. With his ordinary motions, he’ll strafe unexpectedly and frequently if you aren’t precise with the analogs, and it just looks bad. But on the upside, unlike any character in the GTA series, Tanner can swim. This ability is a fine one indeed, but combined with the glitches in this game, swimming is almost completely impractical. For instance, if he swims to a boat that he can operate, regardless of where he is near it, pressing the L1 button places his him onboard without any animation—he just appears as if he teleported out of the water. And that one is just a piece of the glitches you’ll have to deal with in throughout the game.
Of course, carjacking is present in DRIV3R. However, it really doesn’t look like a carjacking—it’s more like you’re borrowing it for a joyride. Tanner can stop a car, but instead of forcing the victim out of it, he’ll just open the door, and the “victim” will just get out and walk away without a struggle. Though sometimes you’ll run across a motorist with a bad temper, and he may come out shooting. But depending on your mood, the game allows you to shoot people through the windows, because dumping a body on the pavement is easier than dealing with a potential confrontation.
Heavily flawed gameplay mechanics automatically makes DRIV3R fall way short of its expectations. Any other rant from this moment on in just bonus, and anything good that pops up isn’t good enough to save it from its mediocrity.
Graphics, Sound, and Animation
The look and feel are the second most important aspects that would help define DRIV3R as a contender, but unfortunately, the presentation is just as much a mess as the gameplay. With the exception of the sound, which seems to be where the majority of the focus went in making this game, DRIV3R is an eyesore.
You can tell that Atari was behind the graphics, because it looks like you’re playing Stuntman rather that what was supposed to be a stellar game. Just about everything appears fake; a lack of sharpness on the edges and the obvious two-dimensional scenery makes the environments you work on seem like a poorly produced B-rated movie. You can see where a conscious effort was made to make the people and buildings look more realistic than cartoonish, but you’d think the designers would have actually finished their end before putting this out. Alongside the half-assed design work, there aren’t many different character models walking the streets; not counting Tanner, I counted five different models in the Miami stage.
As you may have seen the ads on television, you can drive through many objects, like patio furniture, mailboxes and fences. But, when you do, most objects don’t fold or bend from the impact, and they just fall over like stage props, and it doesn’t matter how fast you go through it. Most fences, all thins posts, even a volleyball net on a beach just toppled over like a piece of cardboard. I accidentally backed into a basketball goal, and it toppled over as if it weren’t cemented into the ground. I know destruction of the environment was supposed to be a staple in DRIV3R, but this is ridiculous.
The sound in DRIV3R is its only saving grace. It’s a shame that all the money went into the voiceovers, because this isn’t enough to save this game. Much to our audible delight, big name actors such as Ving Rhames, Michelle Rodriguez, and the video game voiceover legend Michael Madsen grace the characters with their speech. To some, this may have been what sold the game, but like I said before, this aspect, though as great as it is, is definitely not enough to call it stellar title. More emphasis on the actual gameplay, look, and overall editing would have worked wonders.
The look and feel of the crash damage is a two-way street. On the good side, they look reasonable realistic. Fenders and bumpers will hang off the front of your car and drag along the road while you drive. However, the actual impacts leave some to be desired. Upon contact with another vehicle or an immovable object, broken glass and car shrapnel fly off your car in poorly pixilated blocks, and it makes each collision look terrible.
As mentioned before, the glitchiness…I mean, animation…is just plain awful. This game is loaded with bugs and chops in the frame rate, anywhere from the CG sequences to the actual in-game motions. The fluidity in the movements seemed so effortlessly strung together, you couldn’t tell if the game was for the Playstation 2 or the PSOne.
Replay Value
If the terrible gameplay allows you to get anywhere, there may be some replay value you can scrounge up somewhere. There are cheats and added features you can unlock as you progress through the game. The various modes of play may help squeeze a few more hours out of the game, but you’ll more likely to get frustrated by the bugs and glitches than feel satisfied.
In Conclusion…
A GTA Killer, huh? Despite the few areas where Atari tried to change to flavor, DRIV3R can’t even scratch The Getaway. This is probably the biggest disappointment this summer, if not this year, and it would be a shock to me if this game stayed over its $49.99 price tag any longer than a month or two, because it is definitely not worth the money nor the time I waited for it. An all-star cast, heavy promotion, and all the hype in the world couldn’t save this title, and in all seriousness, I pity the people who itched in their seats, expecting something groundbreaking. But, if you still believe the hype, go ahead and rent it. You’ll see.
Nice try, Atari…but the only thing you guys killed was your own credibility.
